![]() ![]() Under the yoke of those long runtimes, a kind of digital fatigue often sets in, where you’re suddenly unable to distinguish one muddy monster smackdown from another. It’s a regular complaint of the CGI era that story – frequently retro-fitted around VFX sequences – takes second place. They might even help blockbusters lift their game. This would come at no extra cost – and indeed the extended pause would help boost the snack sales that already deliver the fattest profit margins. Intermissions could lend a sense of occasion and ceremony to today’s cold-eyed franchise lineup and subtly link back to a more genteel era of film-making. Over the last decade, it feels as if the movies have tried every gimmick – from 3D to Imax to immersive, Secret Cinema-type masquerades – to rejuvenate the night-out experience, but these all come at a premium. However, especially compared with the degraded home viewing experience, interrupted by social media every 30 seconds, they might help bolster the status of cinema-going as a prestige event. No one’s going to pretend that bringing back intermissions would suddenly reverse the post-pandemic malaise of movie theatres in the face of Netflix, Disney+ and others. This would be fitting as this multi-Oscar-winner was a holdover – in a world leaning into the streamlined blockbuster machines ushered in by Spielberg, Lucas et al – from the old-style, sprawling epics that parted their productions midway as surely as Charlton Heston did the Red Sea.īut 21st-century cinema now faces its own existential threat: streaming. Gandhi, in 1982, is often cited as the last major western film to feature an intermission. But essentially, at some point, some Hollywood analyst decided that a 10-minute hiatus was incompatible with the “pack ’em in, six shows a day” production line of the modern multiplex. They have made the occasional return in showcase screenings of latter-day Hollywood film, to enhance the old-timey mood – as with Peter Jackson’s King Kong (187 minutes) or Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (187 minutes) – or simply out of mercy in the case of the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League (242 minutes). However, the death of the intermission has actually been much exaggerated: it still survives in Iceland, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey and, of course, India, where movies contain so many volcanic emotions that a break to let everyone cool off is practically a public health measure. Old-style, sprawling epics parted their productions midway as surely as Charlton Heston did the Red Sea So why not make it official and, once a film tops the 150-minute mark, give us all a break? Elongated runtimes have become so common that many franchises, such as Avengers, The Hobbit and It, started breaking up unified stories into multiple parts anyway – effectively enforcing months-long intermissions. ![]() But, with more franchises than ever happy to take their sweet time, the intermission would be a welcome opportunity to hit the WC, as well as loosen the legs and buttocks and avail ourselves of refreshments, while musing with fellow cinemagoers on the semantics of grunge in The Batman. It feels like a relic of a more civilised epoch. Given that it joins No Time to Die (163 minutes) and Avengers Endgame (181 minutes) in the ranks of recent blockbusters dicing with the bladder-busting three-hour limit, is it time we reinstated that staple of another era of maximalist cinema: the intermission? ![]() No such easy escape, though, for audiences of The Batman, who must display superhuman willpower and gird their loins for its 176-minute runtime. The scene where the Captain rips the Nazi Flag is cut, going right to Liesl talking to Maria.A ccording to Robert Pattinson, the most important accessory on the new batsuit was not the batarang, the bat lasso or the bat grapple, but a Velcro flap that allowed him to pee when needed.Instead of seeing the children doing the "cuckoo" introduction to "So Long, Farewell", we see the children beginning the song in a straight line.The Captain and Baroness walking in the hall during the ball.The scene where the nuns sing the "Alleluia", editing it from the scene in the chapel right to the nun running to tell Mother Abbess that Maria is missing.It goes from Liesl asking to be excused right to her running out the door towards Rolf. The part where Captain Von Trapp tells his children at the dinner table he is going to Vienna the next day.The end of "I Have Confidence In Me" is cut, going to commercial right after Maria says "Oh, help".This version of the film cut out the following moments: In 1987, an NBC version of the film was aired. Originally, when NBC showed the movie on television, it was shown at its full length, leading to a more than four-hour running time because of all the commercials. ![]()
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